How to Develop a City Guide App for Travelers

For all those travel freak outs, there’s some exciting news there! So if you are already planning to explore a new destination and have begun with packing your baggage, booking the flights and hotels, just wait a minute. Well, the good news is that you don’t need to depend on local guides or the tour operators anymore.

Yes, your Smartphone can become your best and most reliable travel guide when travelling to a new destination. Now it’s interesting? You just have to install a City Guide App and relax, enjoy your trip.

As the number of travelers and tourists worldwide has augmented in the last few years, the demand for such useful apps has also increased. We already have a few popular examples of city guide apps such as Foursquare, Trip.com, Musement, etc. doing a commendable job in serving the users.

However, if you are also planning to travel to the same spot as these and build a city guide app for the travelers, then let’s proceed with this journey further to see how to go about it.

The Real Motive Behind Building a City Guide App

The main purpose defined behind developing a city guide app is offering comprehensive and up-to-date information to not only the tourists but even the local residents of the city.

This information would include everything such as the main tourist attractions, the places of sightseeing, amusement parks and their timings, malls, shopping areas, hotels, restaurants, cafeterias etc.

In addition, you also get to know about the popular modes of local transport and conveyances, their fares and proper timings. You also get familiar with the major cultural events or any other celebration occurring around the city. For instance, if you are travelling to Gujarat during Navratri festival, you get to participate in the “Dandiya Utsav”.

So, even if someone is visiting the city or place for the first time, he won’t face any problem in availing the important info. It also makes it easier for the tourist to plan is trip accordingly.

Who Would Usually Benefit from the City Guide App?

Now let’s analyze who would basically benefit from the city guide app or you can say let’s find out who the main target audiences are.

The Local and Foreign Tourists

The app is readily helpful for both the local as well as the foreign nationals who have visited the place for holidaying. You can provide the relevant info in their respective language, which would be easy to comprehend.

The Local Administration of the Place

The city guide app would be incredibly useful for the local administration of the place such as controlling and managing the traffic in much better way. Apart from that, the people can also get in touch with the concerned officers of the government agency if they face any problem.

The Businessmen and Corporate Houses

Many entrepreneurs visit new places to attend corporate meetings or any other business event. The city guide app will give them the exact information on the venue and easiest possible way to reach there. In addition, if the local businessmen have come for purchasing bulk items, it would provide the address of wholesaler or stockiest.

Tour Operators and Travel Agencies

Even the tour operators and travel agencies are not lacking behind in reaping the benefits of the city guide app. They can get the proper statistics about the rise or fall of tourism in the city and can check the vacancies in hotels or flights etc.

The Choice of the Platform

Well, the important decision in developing any app is regarding the choice of the platform. And you know the options. It has to be Android or iOS or Cross-Platform. Again the selection depends on three major factors such as:

The budget and timeframe of the project

Your specific target audience and market

The features that you want to include in the app

The Key Features of the City Guide App

When you are creating a city guide app, it becomes imperative to stuff it with essential features so as to put your application in the category of a great app. So, let’s have a look at the necessary features.

The Support for Both Online and Offline Modes

Your city guide app should offer venerable services both when navigated in online as well as offline mode. It is possible that the tourists won’t get Wi-Fi internet connectivity everywhere and they don’t want to exhaust their mobile data too.

Therefore, in such scenario, the offline navigation facility will come to their rescue as they can browse the information without any hindrance.

The Support for Multi-lingual Languages

Well, language and communication have also been regarded as one of the forerunners of the travel based app. So, you can’t miss it; it has to be essentially included in the city guide app. It would specifically be a boon for the foreigners who are visiting your city for vacation purpose.

As far as the choices of languages are concerned for inclusion into the app, it’s your call. You need to include both local as well as foreign languages. Try to implement languages that are more popular and widely spoken around the world.

Full Information on Public Transport Services

Next, the city guide app should have complete and full information on the public transport services. It should contain the entire timetable of the buses and their routes including their fares.

In addition, you also have to include information about other modes of transport such as train, trams, taxis and ferry.

Important Contact Numbers and Places of Parking

The city guide app should include the important numbers of emergency contacts such as police stations, hospitals, airport, railway station, taxi operators and so on.

You also have to also indicate the places, where people can tourists can park their own vehicles and inform about the charges. You must be aware that the problem of parking is becoming a grave issue and so it is essential to include it.

The Addition of Geo-Location Services

The Geo-location services in the app can be huge booster in increasing your business profitability. According to one of the research, people of all age groups are handsomely using geo-location for different purposes. Thus, the geo-location facility is not only crucial for the cab booking apps and restaurant owners, but a must have feature for the city guide app.

Firstly, the travelers would get useful notifications based on the region. The tourist would be notified that they are going in the right direction and how much time it will take to reach the destination. Besides that you can also send them notification, asking to visit a particular tourist spot of the area.

The Option of Searching Places

You need to provide the users the option of search. This would allow people to search for an exact particular place by typing the relevant keywords in the given space.

Integration with the Social Media Platform

You can integrate the city guide app with the powerful social media platform where people could post images, videos and also share their experiences of visiting the city.

This could prove to a great marketing and promotional tool as it will prompt other users to install the app and use it. Even you can do the same by sharing some beautiful pictures and posting interesting facts about the city and nearby places.

Recommendations and Reviews

Since it is a travel based app, you have to necessarily include the option of review, ratings and recommendations. You can ask the tourists to send their feedback and suggestions about what needs to be improved in the app. This would also encourage others to join the app.

The UI/UX Design

You cannot stay away from implementing an eye-catching UI and UX design if you want to compete in the market. The UI has to be attention grabbing so that it can benefit the User Experience.

Here, in the city guide app, the pictures will play a vital role and so try to take the realistic view.

The Development Team

The composition of the development team would depend on the type of platform you choose.

However, it basically comprises of a project manager, one or two app developers on an average, a front-end and backend developer, UI and UX designers, app tester or quality assurance manager etc.

The Cost of Developing a City Guide App

The entire cost of developing an app including the city guide is divided into different sections such as the selection of platform, number of features to be included, do you need a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or a full-fledged mobile app, app testing and maintenance, UI and UX designing and finally the launching of app.

Usually, it takes around 8 – 10 weeks to develop a city guide app and so, the rough estimate would come around $14,000 to $20,000 on an approx.

Conclusion

A city guide app has been the best reliable friends for the tourists and others who visit new places and have no idea about it. It helps you in searching all the important places that are important from the tourist destination’s point of view by providing all the details about it.

You can also find the local transport easily and know the timings to make the necessary preparations in advance. You can check-out the essential events and happenings taking place around the city.

If you are looking forward to developing a city guide app, feel free to contact us.

He is Sales Manager at Mindinventory, looking after the business expansion along with customer relationship management. A technical person by nature with product management and project management as added benefit.